


Cursed

by nox_candida



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nox_candida/pseuds/nox_candida
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John Watson was 18, he'd been cursed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cursed

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first attempt at filling my prompt for the Holiday fic exchange at 221b_slash_fest on LJ, but I couldn't use it because I couldn't edit it down to 1500 words or less and because it ended up sort of sad and I felt bad giving it as a gift. This one has been edited, but not Britpicked or Beta-read.

When John was 18, there was a girl named Mary. Her skin was pale with a lovely rose tint to her cheeks, and her eyes were wide, blue, and guileless. All the boys at school were half in love with her, and John was no exception.

When John was 18, there was _also_ a girl named Cassandra. She looked wild—her long, dark hair in tangles as if she’d just come out of the wind, her dark eyes much too large for her thin face. She was small, and curvy, and everyone whispered that she was a witch.

And when John was 18, he was in love with Mary, who thought he was a sweetheart, and Cassandra was in love with John, who thought she was interesting. And when Mary refused to think of John as much more than a friend, John made a mistake. He worked out that Cassandra was in love with him and he took her to bed.

“You’ll regret this in the morning,” she’d whispered sadly against his lips, but he’d ignored her because he was hurting and she wanted him and in that moment—after a few beers with his mates at a party—he wanted her, too.

He regretted it in the morning.

When he tried to leave—hungover, blushing, fumbling, unable to look at her—she’d pointed her long finger at him accusingly.

“I told you,” she’d said, coldly, full of anger and bone-deep hurt, “and you didn’t listen. So hear this. You will never be able to touch anyone like you touched me, because when you do, you’ll know what it’s like to be them. It will hurt until you fall in love, and then it will hurt more. I curse you, John Watson.”

Nothing felt any different—John had half expected thunder or an ominous bolt of lightning to strike him down. He expected to feel different, which he didn’t, and he couldn’t help thinking—as he fled with his head down—that Cassandra had finally lost it.

He'd thought that until he arrived home and Harry started teasing him mercilessly that he’d just participated in his first walk of shame. She’d reached up to violently ruffle his hair and he’d reached up to bat her hands away.

In that moment, he had a dizzying sense of being in two places at once, looking through two different sets of eyes, and he’d felt his stomach roil in fear and vertigo. He’d raced for the bathroom and just barely made it before being sick. And when he’d finished that and looked into the mirror to see his sister’s face staring back at him, he’d promptly been sick again.

When John Watson was 18, he’d been cursed.

***

John always wore gloves. Always. It was part of the reason he’d become a doctor in the first place—no one looked at you askance if you constantly had latex gloves on. He wore layers of them—as many as he could fit onto his hands—in order to mute and muffle the sensation of being in someone else’s head and having someone else’s body. It wasn’t anything _useful_ like telepathy. No, instead it was always disorienting, always made him nauseous, and was always painful.

Touching hurt. Touching women hurt because he found himself with breasts, and touching tall men felt like being stretched on the rack. When he touched old people, he felt his bones creak in sympathy, understood what it was like for your legs to give out on you, to be hunched over. The old and sick people hurt the worst.

So he joined the army, where he’d be mostly surrounded by young men in mostly good health, where accidental touches would hurt the least. Or so he’d thought. He hadn’t contended on traumatic injuries, which carried emotional hurts in addition to physical pain.

It was almost a relief to be shot.

It _should_ have been a relief to return to London, alone. No one to touch, no one to make him hurt. He could stay in his own head, where he belonged, and not experience that disorienting feeling of being two people at once.

It wasn’t. He was lonely, there was an itch to be useful, to be around others.

And just when he’d been ready to give up, to wonder what was so great about life that he continued to live it—even a cut-rate one like his—he was cursed anew.

He met Sherlock Holmes.

***

John knew he was in love with Sherlock Holmes from the moment Sherlock winked at him. He allowed himself to sigh in relief. Sherlock was barely four years younger than him. Yes, he was a bit tall, but he’d been in worse pain before. Surely six inches was a small price to pay. Surely the disorientation of being in Sherlock’s head and his own at the same time was worth this feeling of being alive: heart pounding and blood rushing through his veins.

Surely a little bit of pain was worth love.

***

One day John woke to find that his gloves were gone.

He absolutely panicked.

“ _Sherlock!_ Have you seen my gloves?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered calmly as John skidded to a stop at the entrance to the kitchen.

There was no point in asking where they were, because he could see them. Sherlock had them in his hands and was _examining_ them.

“Did you take those off my hands while I was sleeping?” John asked, panic clawing at the back of his throat while anger and fear battled it out in his brain.

“Yes,” Sherlock responded simply, staring at John intensely. “I have been attempting to deduce the reason that you always wear these gloves, no matter the temperature or the situation.”

“Those are mine,” John said, trying desperately to keep a lid on his panic. “I need them, and you had no right to come into my room and take them.” He was aghast to realise his voice was shaking. “Give them back.”

“Why?” Sherlock asked, his gaze intense and unwavering.

John tried to think quickly. “I got them from a friend who--”

“No.”

John gulped. “Look, it doesn’t matter--”

Sherlock moved closer to him, still staring. “Yes, it does. It’s something to do with your hands, obviously, but you don’t have any reason to wear them.”

John was shaking. Sherlock was too close, _too close_ , and the urge to put his hands on Sherlock’s, to touch skin to skin, was overwhelming. He shook his head and took a step back, his hands behind his back. They were useless without gloves.

“Sherlock, please, stop. Please.” He loathed the fact that he was begging, but he didn’t want that pain, not now. The pain of touching would hurt so much worse in this case, he knew that instinctively.

“Tell me.” Sherlock took another step closer and John found himself with his back to the wall. His eyes darted around, looking for an escape— _if I can make it to the door, I can leave, I can get a new pair of gloves, it won’t matter, I’ll be safe_ —but Sherlock was determinedly blocking his way.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” John whispered, his voice cracking.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him, the look on his face one John had seen many times before, his ‘I can’t believe you’re this stupid’ look.

John shook his head, but he’d already lost and he knew it. “Hold out your hand,” he said, voice strained and miserable.

Sherlock stared at him, and then held his hand out. John took a deep breath, his hand shaking slightly, and touched Sherlock’s hand.

Nothing happened.

He stared at the place where his fingers were touching Sherlock’s in complete incomprehension. There was no pain, nor the tell-tale vertigo of being in two places at once and seeing two different sights at the same time. There was nothing at all and for the briefest moment, sheer joy surged through John’s brain. There was someone on this planet he could touch, really _touch_ and it just so happened to be the one man on the planet he was in love with. Finally, _finally_ , the curse was broken.

But then Sherlock wrenched his hand away as though he’d been burned, his face twisted up in agony.

Without a word, he handed the gloves back to John, who took them numbly, stomach churning as though he was going to be ill.

“I see,” Sherlock said, and his voice sounded strained with pain. He was holding his hand protectively. “I don’t know how that’s possible, but--”

“It was a curse,” John whispered, brokenly, because he’d just remembered the last part of the curse, the part he’d never really paid attention to because the first part had dominated his life.

 _It will hurt until you fall in love, and then it will hurt more._

He could never touch the man he loved without causing pain. Cassandra had chosen her words well, because he could never do anything that would hurt Sherlock.

He felt hollow, except for the thudding of his heart against his ribs, and he fancied that—with every beat—stress fractures were forming, little cracks that would, some day in the future, cause the whole thing to shatter in his chest. He slipped on the gloves and watched as Sherlock moved back into the kitchen, ran the cold water and slipped his long, reddened fingers under the stream.

When he was 37 years, 4 months, 18 days old, John Watson was cursed again.


End file.
